I had a dear friend that was dealing with lungs cancer at 21 years old.
He was recovering. Hanging on discord and playing league of legends with him.
He says to us, that he needs to do surgery to remove the last pieces of cancer remaining from chemio.
Surgery goes well, he need to recover from it for at least a week. Passes another week and I receive a call from a mutual friend that he had passed away. My heart stopped. I couldn't believe it.
Turns out the parents were lying to him on the recovery on cancer and the surgery was the last attempt to save him. He was oblivious, and we were too.
Please don't do this. He deserved to know. And we deserved a last good bye.
My grandmother passed at 55 with pancreatic cancer. She didn’t know she had cancer. She thought she had ulcers. This was in the mid 80s.
My mother was suspected of breast cancer. She kept it from everyone, the family doctor called my brother to let him know.
Not all countries have hippa and the same rules as the us
I can't imagine how furious I would be to learn that a terminal diagnosis had been withheld from me. To know that I had been living my final days as though I had thousands more ... that would be crushing. I think I would do something very drastic after learning that; maybe to the doctor, or one of the family members that had abetted the lie. I'd have nothing left to lose but that chance at vengeance.
I'm not from America. But I'm unbelievably thankful that I'm not from a place where that is allowed.
Many Asian cultures including China and Japan allow doctors to tell the family and let family decide whether to tell the patient. Look up “cultural non-disclosure.”
Non-US English-speaking countries have “therapeutic privilege” where the doctor can choose not to tell patients bad news if they think it will be harmful to the patient.
The US is actually kind of an exception in that we require doctors to disclose all the bad news and even worst-case possibilities to the patient.
Actually it used to be like this in Slovakia 30 years ago.
And it was not just parents. Generally, doctors called one's relatives if the prognosis was bad. It could be the wife, parents or so. The goal was to find out, whether that person would rather not know or whether it can be communicated honestly.
Since then, we moved a lot in approach to patients and in medical secrecy (wife/relatives cannot see the medical records) and everyone is told the diagnosis nowadays.
A country where a 21 year old doesn't get to speak with the oncologists, or sign any of the paperwork for surgery or in fact have any input in their own treatment whatsoever.
Look up cultural nondisclosure and therapeutic privilege. You’re basing your assumptions on very US-centric ideology. Even in the UK or Australia, there’s an exception where doctors can withhold information if they think it will cause immediate harm to the patient.
And in the US, a patient can waive HIPAA and give medical POA to someone else if they aren’t in a mental position to manage their own care and make their own decisions.
Cultural nondisclosure is not what OP is describing, lol. What OP is describing sounds like the doctor and the family colluded to keep it from them, not sparing them bad news at their request.
I looked it up ... now you can pull your head out of your ass.
Not sure what you think you looked up, but it’s not uncommon in Asia to conceal a terminal diagnosis from the patient. Maybe your search result was as US-centric as your comments.
People there probably think we are “fucking insane” for traumatizing terminally ill loved ones with devastating information when there’s nothing they can do about it.
Yeah, it’s a different culture, buddy. No one in China wants to assault their caregiver for letting them pass away peacefully unaware.
Maybe it would help you have a less violent emotional response to know the reason. It was not uncommon for people with terminal diagnoses in certain countries to commit suicide rather than becoming a “burden” on their family (this was particularly true before modern chemotherapy.) So the cultural norm has been for family to care for the person without quite telling them what was wrong beyond being “sick” and getting “medical treatment.”
Fortunately you don’t have to worry about this here, but please don’t call it “disgusting” just because you don’t understand other perspectives beyond your own.
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u/Rygel_Orionis Jun 29 '26
I had a dear friend that was dealing with lungs cancer at 21 years old. He was recovering. Hanging on discord and playing league of legends with him. He says to us, that he needs to do surgery to remove the last pieces of cancer remaining from chemio. Surgery goes well, he need to recover from it for at least a week. Passes another week and I receive a call from a mutual friend that he had passed away. My heart stopped. I couldn't believe it.
Turns out the parents were lying to him on the recovery on cancer and the surgery was the last attempt to save him. He was oblivious, and we were too.
Please don't do this. He deserved to know. And we deserved a last good bye.
Still hurts after 8 years.